Neutral Milk Hotel - An "Unknown" Band with a Huge Following

Neutral Milk Hotel hasn't released a new recording in ten years, and yet the album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea remains as fresh and inspiring as any indie recordings coming out right now, and established singer and guitarist (and the band's chief songwriter) Jeff Mangum as one of the creative talents of the decade.

Early recordings of the NMH tend to include an amalgam of whoever Mangum was playing with at the time, which is obvious on the EP recording Everything Is (originally released in 1994), but by the time On Avery Island(1996) and Aeroplane (1998) were released, the band had gelled a bit and featured Julian Koster on banjo, bass, and saw; Scott Spillane on horns; and Jeremy Barnes on drums.

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WashinMyGoat
wrote

on Sunday, September 21 2008, 1:32pm

"In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" is an album that must be listened to in full to be completely appreciated. The bizarre metaphors and nonsensical lyrics somehow make perfect sense in the context of the whole album. My favorite song from the album is "Oh Comely." The recording was originally supposed to test the microphone placement, but Jeff Mangum belts out the 8 minute song in one amazing take.

It's a wonderful album, but I must warn that it might take some getting used to for some people. You either get it or you don't, and those that don't are missing out big time.